The Black Experience in America Part 9

The Debate over Means and Ends

In the nineteenth century the problem that faced the Afro-American community was how to destroy the inst.i.tution of slavery. In the twentieth century the question was how to achieve equality. Frederick Dougla.s.s had been in the vanguard of the fight to overthrow the peculiar inst.i.tution. Later, he was among the first to realize that Emanc.i.p.ation had not solved all the problems. It was his belief that the forces of racism and indifference were responsible for relegating the ex-slave to a second-cla.s.s status. When the Federal Government terminated Reconstruction without providing his people with the tools for competing in American society, Dougla.s.s's disappointment was severe.

At the turn of the century the focus of the problems facing Afro-Americans had changed. Slavery had been abolished, but not race prejudice. The elimination of this scourge became the basis for a new drive. Dougla.s.s, who for a half century had been looked upon as the spokesman for his people, was too old to tackle the task of ending segregation and prejudice based on race. When he died early in 1895, the Afro-American community was left without leaders.h.i.+p capable of uniting the diverse elements within the movement. The pressing need was for black men and women to escape physical violence and to find acceptance with dignity, and it couldn't wait.

However, within this community there were many who were capable of leaders.h.i.+p. What was lacking were the instruments of leaders.h.i.+p. Money, power, and the press, for the most part, were in the hands of whites who had concluded that the ex-slave would have to solve his own problems.

What this meant was that the Whites wanted to be left in peace. Dozens of Afro-Americans, however, were not content to accept the degrading position which had been a.s.signed to them. Utilizing the limited resources within their own community, new leaders.h.i.+p evolved and began to debate the issues of the day. Before Emanc.i.p.ation the problems had seemed simple. All attention was focused on the abolition of slavery, and the only point of controversy centered on the means by which it should be achieved. But segregation and discrimination were not so easily defined and attacked. The debates which ensued widened to include disagreement over both means and ends. A vocal minority, discouraged by the emasculating effects of discrimination, believed that they should withdraw from white society altogether. Some of them wanted to return to Africa and to a.s.sist its inhabitants in their liberation from European imperialism. They planned to create an independent African nation.

Others, while not wanting to leave America, still wanted to withdraw from white society into a world of their own choosing and making.

The majority, however, insisted that the African immigrant, like those from Europe, had the right to all the privileges of being American. Some of them wanted to join the white society, accept its Euro-American cultural values, forget their past, and a.s.similate into the mainstream of American life. Still others, while wanting to find their place within the American nation, insisted that the country must be transformed into a genuinely pluralistic society. While they wanted to be integrated into the nation, they did not want to join the white society. Instead of a.s.similating into Anglo-Saxon culture, they wanted American civilization to become multi-racial, multi-ethnic, and highly fluid.

The means which were proposed to achieve these differing ends were highly diverse. Some argued that the ex-slave must first demonstrate his readiness to be accepted within white society. Others claimed that they need only demand the rights which were legally theirs. In order to do this they planned to make aggressive use of the press and the courts.

Ma.s.s organization to achieve economic and political pressure was also recommended as another technique.

There were scores of leaders representing dozens of differing positions.

In the first half of the twentieth century, the spectrum was limited almost exclusively to the advocacy of nonviolent techniques. Four of these leaders will be discussed below. Their ideas present a broad overview of the concepts to be found within the Afro-American community.

Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton, W. E. B. DuBois, Marcus Garvey, and A. Philip Randolph represented a wide variety of approaches, their ideas forming the total spectrum of the thrust for remaking the black role in white society.

Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton: The Trumpet of Conciliation

Within a few months of Dougla.s.s's death, a new leader was thrust upon the Afro-American community. Unlike Dougla.s.s, who believed in self-a.s.sertion, Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton developed a leaders.h.i.+p style based on the model of the old plantation house servant. He used humility, politeness, flattery, and restraint as a wedge with which he hoped to split the wall of racial discrimination. His conciliatory approach won the enthusiastic support of the solid South as well as that of influential Northern politicians and industrialists, Their backing gained him a national reputation and provided him with easy access to the press. Members of his own community were filled with pride to see one of their own treated with such respect by wealthy and influential leaders of white America. When Theodore Roosevelt entertained Was.h.i.+ngton for dinner at the White House, the Afro-American community was overjoyed. However, some whites believed that it had been a dangerous breach of etiquette. Nevertheless, there were those within the Afro-American community who were not enthusiastic about their new leader. They believed that conciliation was the road to surrender and not the way to victory.

Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton was born into slavery on April 5, 1856. His mother had been a slave in Franklin County, Virginia. The ident.i.ty of his white father remains unknown. After Emanc.i.p.ation the family moved to West Virginia where it struggled to achieve a livelihood. Young Booker attended a school for the children of ex-slaves while, at the same time, holding down a full-time job in the mines. As a courteous, cooperative, hard-working young man he secured a job cleaning and doing other tasks around the house of one of the mine owners. This occupation was less strenuous than working in the mines, and it left him more energy to pursue his studies, In 1872, with nothing to help him besides his determination, he traveled and worked his way hundreds of miles to Hampton Inst.i.tute. Undaunted by lack of tuition, he insisted that he could do some useful work to cover his expenses. When he was directed to clean the adjoining room as a kind of entrance test, his response was to apply himself to the task. When the teacher's white handkerchief could not discover any dirt in the room, she was so impressed with his work and with his genial personality that she admitted him to the inst.i.tute and found a janitorial job to ease his financial situation.

Hampton Normal and Agricultural Inst.i.tute had been started after the Civil War by General Samuel Armstrong to train ex-slaves to lead their people in pursuit of land and homes. Armstrong strongly believed that they should not be given what they could earn for themselves. Therefore, the inst.i.tute strove to teach the student manners, cleanliness, morality, and practical skills with which to make a living, He believed that hard work for its own sake developed moral virtue, and he tried to instill this respect for labor into his students.

After graduating, Was.h.i.+ngton became an instructor at Hampton Inst.i.tute.

Then in 1881, he was invited to Tuskegee, Alabama, to found a similar school there. Louis Adams, a skilled freedman, had made a political deal which led to the establishment of the Tuskegee Inst.i.tute. In return for his delivery of the Negro vote, the state legislature provided minimal funds for educating ex-slaves. The roof of the building which they were using leaked and the students often had to study with umbrellas over their heads.

In effect, the inst.i.tute became a kind of commune. The students grew their own food on the adjoining land, and they erected their own buildings. They sold their excess produce to the citizens of Tuskegee.

They also developed skills in carpentry, brick-making, and a score of other trades and sold their products to the community. Gradually, as the white citizens realized that the school was not developing aggressive blacks and that the students were providing a contribution to the community, they came to accept it and to help it to develop by contributing funds and supplies. They found that Tuskegee students were hard-working, courteous, and humble instead of being self-a.s.sertive and articulate. They realized that their fears of educating the ex-slave had been unfounded.

In an attempt to lure more business and industry into the South, political leaders scheduled a trade exposition for Atlanta, Georgia, in 1895. A delegation was sent to the nation's capital to request financial aid from a Congressional comittee. Booker T. Was.h.i.+ngton was included in the delegation as a token that there was backing from all portions of the community for the project. Speaking to the comittee, Was.h.i.+ngton said that: "the Negro should not be deprived by unfair means of the franchise, political agitation alone would not save him, and that to back the ballot he must have property, industry, skill, economy, intelligence, and character, and that no race without these elements could permanently succeed."

The delegation admitted that his oratory had significantly helped their cause. They were impressed with his racial views, particularly when he stated that character development was more important than political agitation. This was a position which they could whole-heartily endorse.

The Cotton States Exposition which was held in Atlanta in 1895 strove to project an image of the South as a peaceful and prosperous region. It tried to represent the South as a desirable location for future financial investment. Part of the peaceful image which it tried to create was a picture of racial harmony. The Exposition had a pavilion which was built by ex-slaves and which displayed their products, and it was decided to invite a Negro to speak at the Exposition. The choice fell on Booker T.

Was.h.i.+ngton. His famous speech, which later became known as "The Atlanta Compromise", lay heavily on his mind for many weeks before its delivery.

He wanted to cement racial relations as well as to advance the status of his people. He was afraid of saying something which might undermine the cause.

Was.h.i.+ngton's speech was built around two graphic images. In the first, he told the story of a s.h.i.+p at sea which was out of fresh water. It signaled a pa.s.sing vessel that it needed fresh water. The other s.h.i.+p told them to let down their bucket. Finally, after much consternation, the crew complied. Instead of finding salt water as they had expected, the bucket was pulled up filled with fresh water from the mouth of the Amazon.

Was.h.i.+ngton used this image to suggest that the racial situation could be improved if both races would begin from where they were. The second picture which he used was that of the hand. He pointed out that while the hand was one, the fingers were separate. Similarly, he suggested that national unity and social segregation could go together.

Was.h.i.+ngton built on the image of the s.h.i.+p's needing fresh water to persuade Negroes to start where they were in building their future. He said:

"To those of my race who depend on bettering their condition in a foreign land or who underestimate the importance of cultivating friendly relations with the southern white man, who is their next-door neighbor, I would say: 'Cast down your bucket where you are, cast it down in making friends in every manly way of the people of all races by whom we are surrounded. Cast it down in agriculture, mechanics, in commerce, in domestic service, and in the professions. And in this connection it is well to bear in mind that whatever other sins the South may be called to bear, when it comes to business, pure and simple, it is in the South that the Negro is given a man's chance in the commercial world, and in nothing is this Exposition more eloquent than in emphasizing this chance. Our greatest danger is that in the great leap from slavery to freedom we may overlook the fact that the ma.s.ses of us are to live by the productions of our hands, and fail to keep in mind that we shall prosper in proportion as we learn to dignify and glorify common labor and put brains and skill into the common occupations of life; shall prosper in proportion as we learn to draw the line between the superficial and the substantial, the ornamental gewgaws of life and the useful. No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem. It is at the bottom of life we must begin, and not at the top. Nor should we permit our grievances to overshadow our opportunities."

Was.h.i.+ngton then turned to the whites in the audience and urged them to start where they were in building national prosperity and racial unity.

He said:

"To those of the white race who look to the incoming of those of foreign birth and strange tongue and habits for the prosperity of the South, were I permitted I would repeat what I say to my own race, 'Cast down your bucket where you are.' Cast it down among the eight millions of Negroes whose habits you know, whose fidelity and love you have tested in days when to have proved treacherous meant the ruin of your firesides. Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labor wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories. While doing this, you can be sure in the future, as in the past, that you and your families will be surrounded by the most patient, faithful, law-abiding, and unresentful people that the world has seen....

so in the future, in our humble way, we shall stand by you with a devotion that no foreigner can approach, ready to lay down our lives, if need be, in defence of yours, interlacing our industrial, commercial, civil, and religious life with yours in a way that shall make the interests of both races one."

He summed up his plea for racial cooperation with the second pictorial image. He told the audience that "In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet as one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." This proposal brought forth thunderous applause. He went on to say that the wisest in his race were aware that fighting for social equality was folly. The ex-slave, he believed, must first struggle and prepare himself for the a.s.sumption of his rights, which were privileges to be earned. While he did believe that his people would receive their full rights at some future date, he insisted that "The opportunity to earn a dollar in a factory just now is worth infinitely more than the opportunity to spend a dollar in an opera-house." Economic opportunity was far more important than either social equality or political rights. He closed the speech by praising the Exposition for the effect it would have in bringing fresh material prosperity to the South, and added:

"... yet far above and beyond material benefits will be that higher good, that, let us pray G.o.d, will come, in a blotting out of sectional differences and racial animosities and suspicions, in a determination to administer absolute justice, in a willing obedience among all cla.s.ses to the mandates of law. This, coupled with our material prosperity, will bring into our beloved South a new heaven and a new earth."

When he finished, the audience applauded wildly. Governor Bullock rushed across the platform and shook his hand. The next day he was greeted and praised enthusiastically on the Atlanta streets. President Cleveland, after having read the speech, wrote Was.h.i.+ngton and thanked him for what he had said. The following year Harvard University granted him an honorary Master's degree. The press both North and South quoted all or parts of the speech, and most of the newspapers carried appreciative editorials. The Charleston News and Courier, for example said "His skin is colored, but his head is sound, and his heart is in the right place."

Money poured in to finance the Tuskegee Inst.i.tute. Overnight Was.h.i.+ngton was skyrocketed to national fame.

However, there were those who did not appreciate their new leader's call to conciliation. In view of the growing virulence of racism and the spread of Jim Crow legislation, they believed that his refusal to demand their rights was, in fact, a form of emasculation.

John Hope was one of those who had heard the Atlanta speech and did not want to accept the compromise. He was a professor at Roger Williams University in Nashville, Tennessee, and later was to become president of Atlanta University. The following year, after carefully considering Was.h.i.+ngton's speech, he made an address of his own to his colleagues in Nashville. He bitterly attacked the compromise and said that he believed it to be cowardly for a black man to admit that his people were not striving for equality. If money, education, and honesty would not bring the black man as much respect as they would to another American citizen, they were a curse and not a blessing.

This was obviously an attack on Was.h.i.+ngton's statement that the right to earn a dollar was worth more than anything else. He said that if he did not have the right to spend a dollar in the opera house and to do those things that other free men do, he was not free. Hope was not content with demanding equality in vague terms. He insisted that what he wanted was social equality. Instead of urging conciliation, he advocated that the Afro-Americans should be restless and dissatisfied. When their discontent broke through the wall of discrimination, then there would be no need to plead for Justice. Then they would be men. A decade later, those who opposed Was.h.i.+ngton's leaders.h.i.+p decided that they needed to organize and coordinate their activities.

John Hope, W. E. B. DuBois, Monroe Trotter, and several others wanted to speak out more vigorously against racial discrimination, segregation, and lynching. To do this, they created the Niagara Movement to challenge the political domination of Was.h.i.+ngton's Tuskegee machine. Because he was the recognized advisor to politicians and philanthropists, this was a difficult task. Hope's criticism resulted in the diminution of financial support to Atlanta University where Hope was president.

W. E. B. DuBois, who was a professor at Atlanta University at that time, charged that:

"Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton distinctly asks that black people give up, at least for the present, three things,--First, political power; second, insistence on civil rights; Third, higher education of Negro youth,--and concentrate their energies on industrial education, the acc.u.mulation of wealth, and the conciliation of the South.... As a result of this tender of the palm-branch, what has been the return? In these years there have occurred: 1. The disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the Negro. 2. The legal creation of a distinct status of civil inferiority for the Negro. 3. The steady withdrawal of aid from inst.i.tutions for the higher training of the Negro.

These movements are not, to be sure, direct results of Mr. Was.h.i.+ngton's teachings; but his propaganda has, without a shadow of a doubt, helped their speedier accomplishment. The question then comes: Is it possible, and probable, that nine millions of men can make effective progress in economic lines if they are deprived of political rights, made a servile caste, and allowed only the most meager chance for developing their exceptional men? If history and reason give any distinct answer to these questions, it is an emphatic No."

He believed that beginning at the bottom with a humble trade was the best way to stay at the bottom, respect should be worth more than material advancement. He believed that Was.h.i.+ngton's policy had replaced manliness with a shallow materialism. Monroe Trotter edited the Boston Guardian which was one of the most militant papers published in the Afro-American community. Trotter used it as a platform from which to attack Was.h.i.+ngton's leaders.h.i.+p. On one occasion when Was.h.i.+ngton was speaking in Boston, Trotter was among those arrested for creating a disturbance during the lecture. When the Niagara Movement was dissolved in 1909 and most of its leaders joined with liberal whites in founding the National a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People, Trotter refused to follow them. Besides distrusting the conciliatory policies of Was.h.i.+ngton, he could not put his trust in an integrated movement.

In the years immediately preceding his death in 1915, Was.h.i.+ngton hinted at a growing disillusionment with the way in which his compromise had worked. In 1912 he wrote an article for Century magazine ent.i.tled "Is the Negro Having a Fair Chance?" In it he criticized the fact that more money was appropriated for the education of whites than of blacks. He also criticized the convict lease system which had developed in the South. His dissatisfaction with segregation became clear when he pointed out that although Jim Crow facilities might be separate they were never equal.

Another article which he had written was published after his death in the New Republic. In it he described the terrible effects of segregation. He said that it meant inferior sidewalks, inferior street-lighting, inferior sewage facilities, and inferior police protection. Such lacks made for difficult neighborhoods in which to raise families in decency.

If Was.h.i.+ngton's program was a sellout, as many believed, it is becoming increasingly clear that he did not intend his compromise as an end in itself. He believed that it could be the means to a much broader future.

When he spoke before the Congressional comittee early in 1895, he expressed his opposition to disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt on a racial basis. His apparent acceptance of it at Atlanta was only a tactical maneuver. In an article which he wrote in 1898, he said that he believed that the time would come when his people would be given all of their rights in the South. He said that they would receive the privileges due to any citizen on the basis of ability, character, and material possessions. He was, in effect, approving disenfranchis.e.m.e.nt of the poor and ignorant in both races. When Negroes did receive what was due them as citizens, he said, it would come from Southern whites as the result of the natural evolution of mutual trust and acceptance. Artificial external pressure, he insisted, would not help.

The Atlanta Compromise was to be the means to an end and not an end in itself. If the ex-slave would start at the bottom, develop manners and friendliness, Was.h.i.+ngton believed that he could make his labor indispensable to white society. Acceptance of segregation was, at that time, a necessary part of good behavior. If the whites, in turn, opened the doors of economic opportunity to the ex-slave instead of importing more European immigrants, Was.h.i.+ngton said that the nation would have an English-speaking non-striking labor force. Gradually, individual Afro-Americans would gain trust, acceptance, and respect. The cla.s.s line based on color would be replaced by one based on intelligence and morality.

Was.h.i.+ngton seemed to be unaware that a race which began at the bottom could stay at the bottom. In an age of rapid urbanization and industrialization a strategy which emphasized craft and agriculture was drastically out of step with the economic realities. Moreover the nation did not accept its part of the compromise. The flood of immigration continued unabated for another two decades. When Afro-Americans were given opportunities in industry, it became clear that there were black jobs and white jobs. The former were always poorly paid.

There were two bases for Was.h.i.+ngton's belief that the Negro should start at the bottom and work his way up. The nineteenth-century economic creed had taught that hard work unlocked the door which led from rags to riches. This teaching was also reinforced by Was.h.i.+ngton's own experience.

Born in slavery and poverty, he rose from obscurity to fame and influence through honesty and industry. However, Was.h.i.+ngton seemed unaware that the most which his policy could ever achieve was a token acceptance which would leave the Negro ma.s.ses behind.

W. E. B. DuBois: The Trumpet of Confrontation

In contrast to Was.h.i.+ngton's policy of conciliation and compromise, W. E.

B. DuBois believed that it was necessary to act like men in order to be accepted as men, Speaking the truth as he saw it, loudly, clearly, and fearlessly, was to him the minimum criterion for manliness. This led to a contrasting style of leaders.h.i.+p. Where Was.h.i.+ngton had been polite and ingratiating, DuBois was self-a.s.sertive and, frequently, aggressive.

Where Was.h.i.+ngton had tried to win the trust of white bigots, DuBois insisted on confronting them with the truth as he saw it. Where Was.h.i.+ngton had counseled peace, DuBois clamored for action.

The contrasting leaders.h.i.+p styles of Was.h.i.+ngton and DuBois were rooted in their differing life experiences. DuBois was born in February, 1868, in Great Barrington, Ma.s.sachusetts. His grandfather had procured his own freedom through partic.i.p.ating in the American Revolution. DuBois received his elementary and secondary education in an integrated setting which prevented his becoming conscious of the color bar. However, receiving an integrated college education was not so simple. Instead he headed South to Fisk University to further his education, There, the daily insults of discrimination and segregation came to him as a shock. He had not been trained to accept them, and these daily hara.s.sments filled him with anger and hostility. He returned north to pursue his graduate education at Harvard University, and he also spent some time at the University of Berlin exploring the new field of sociology.

DuBois's first-cla.s.s education as well as his own scholarly bent led him to put considerable faith in reason and learning as the tools with which to rebuild the world. He came to believe that bigotry and discrimination were rooted in ignorance and that scholars.h.i.+p could destroy them by exposing them to the light of truth. He strove to demonstrate that the Afro-American was not innately inferior and that his inferior status sprang from his unequal and unfair treatment in America.